DOD shows science, technology success despite hard year for workforce

By Cheryl Pellerin, American Forces Press Service / Published May 15, 2014

Dr. David Walker testifies before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense on the Fiscal Year 2015 Air Force Science and Technology program May 14, 2014, in Washington, D.C. Walker is the deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for science, technology and engineering. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Carlin Leslie)

Dr. David Walker testifies before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense on the Fiscal Year 2015 Air Force Science and Technology program, May 14, 2014, in Washington, D.C. Walker is the deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for science, technology and engineering. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Carlin Leslie)

Dr. David Walker testifies before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense on the Fiscal Year 2015 Air Force Science and Technology program, May 14, 2014, in Washington, D.C. Walker is the deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for science, technology and engineering. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Carlin Leslie)

WASHINGTON (AFNS) --

Despite a year of workforce furloughs and dwindling budgets, the Defense Department’s science and technology enterprise reports advances ranging from a full hypersonic weapon system and high-energy lasers to light-based brain treatments and new core capabilities in cyber warfare, senior DOD officials told a Senate panel May 14.

Alan Shaffer, acting assistant secretary of defense for research and engineering, and Dr. David Walker, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for science, technology and engineering, testified on defense research and innovation before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense.

Shaffer told the panel the DOD workforce has produced remarkable achievements, but now shows signs of stress due to downsizing-furlough-shutdown challenges of the past year.

“These affected the health of our workforce and the programs they execute in ways we are just beginning to understand,” he said. “We have begun to address the challenges but they remain a concern to us.”

The fiscal year 2015 science and technology budget request is down about 5 percent, to $11.5 billion compared to fiscal 2014’s $12 billion request, Shaffer added.

“(The) DOD tries to balance our program (but) there are factors that led Defense Secretary (Chuck) Hagel to conclude in his Feb. 24 budget rollout that we are entering an era where American dominance on the seas, in the skies and in space can no longer be taken for granted,” Shaffer said.

The current budget drives force reduction but this reduction will take several years to yield savings, Shaffer said. In the fiscal 2015 budget, readiness and or modernization will pay a larger percentage of the overall department bill.

“To address the challenges,” he added, “we needed to examine the strategy we’re using to focus the S&T investment on high-priority areas (and) from that review emerged a strategy for investment.”

Shaffer said the DOD invests in science and technology for three reasons:

- To mitigate new and emerging threat capabilities, “and we see a significant need in the areas of electronic warfare, cyber, counter-weapons of mass destruction, and preserving space capabilities.”

- To affordably enable new or extended capabilities in military systems and future systems, “and there is a significant need to grow department systems’ engineering, modeling, and simulation and prototyping.”

- To develop technology surprise, and “we see significant need in areas such as autonomy, human systems, quantum sensing and big data.”

Shaffer said despite the challenges, the department continues to perform.

The focused and balanced investments of the Air Force Fiscal 2015 science and technology program are hedges against the unpredictable future and provide pathways to a flexible, precise and lethal force at a relatively low cost in relation to the return on investment, according to Walker.

“The Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics recently reminded us that complacency now and in the future is simply not an option,” Walker said.

The Air Force must maintain and expand its technological advantage to ensure freedom of access in air, space and cyberspace, he said.

To that end, the Air Force X-51 Waverider hypersonic demonstration was the second successful demo of powered scramjet technology, he added.

A scramjet, according to technical descriptions, is a variant of a ramjet air-breathing engine but one in which combustion takes place in the craft’s supersonic airflow.

This demonstrates “that we are getting close to developing a full hypersonic system,” Shaffer said. “No one else in the world has done this.”